ServiceStack CSV Format

#ServiceStack's CSV Format

The CSV format is now a first-class supported format which means all your existing web services can automatically take advantage of the new format without any config or code changes. Just drop the latest ServiceStack.dlls (v1.77+) and you're good to go!

Importance of CSV

CSV is an important format for transferring, migrating and quickly visualizing data as all spreadsheets support viewing and editing CSV files directly whilst its supported by most RDBMS support exporting and importing data. Compared with other serialization formats, it provides a compact and efficient way to transfer large datasets in an easy to read text format.

Speed

The CSV Serializer used was developed using the same tech that makes ServiceStack's JSV and JSON serializers fast (i.e. no run-time reflection, static delegate caching, etc), which should make it the fastest CSV serializer available for .NET.

Downloadable Separately

The CsvSerializer is maintained in the ServiceStack.Text project and is available as a separate download for use in your own .NET projects.

How to register your own custom format with ServiceStack

What makes the 'CSV' format different is its the first format added using the new extensions API. The complete code to register the CSV format is:

//Register the 'text/csv' content-type and serializers (format is inferred from the last part of the content-type)
this.ContentTypeFilters.Register(ContentType.Csv,
	CsvSerializer.SerializeToStream, CsvSerializer.DeserializeFromStream);

//Add a response filter to add a 'Content-Disposition' header so browsers treat it natively as a .csv file
this.ResponseFilters.Add((req, res, dto) =>
	{
		if (req.ResponseContentType == ContentType.Csv)
		{
			res.AddHeader(HttpHeaders.ContentDisposition,
				string.Format("attachment;filename={0}.csv", req.OperationName));
		}
	});

Note: ServiceStack already does this for you though it still serves a good example to show how you can plug-in your own custom format. If you wish, you can remove all custom formats with (inside AppHost.Configure()): this.ContentTypeFilters.ClearCustomFilters();

The ability to automatically to register another format and provide immediate value and added functionality to all your existing web services (without any code-changes or configuration) we believe is a testament to ServiceStack's clean design of using strongly-typed 'message-based' DTOs to let you develop clean, testable and re-usable web services. No code-gen or marshalling is required to bind to an abstract method signature, every request and calling convention maps naturally to your webservices DTOs.

Usage

The CSV format is effectively a first-class supported format so everything should work as expected, including being registered as an available format on ServiceStack's metadata index page:

• /servicestack/metadata

And being able to preview the output of a service:

• /servicestack/csv/metadata?op=Movie

By default they are automatically available using ServiceStack's standard calling conventions, e.g:

• /csv/syncreply/Movies

REST Usage

CSV also works just as you would expect with user-defined REST-ful urls, i.e. you can append ?format=csv to specify the format in the url e.g:

• /movies?format=csv

This is how the above web service output looks when opened up in google docs

Alternative in following with the HTTP specification you can also specify content-type "text/csv" in the Accept header of your HttpClient, e.g:

var httpReq = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create("http://servicestack.net/ServiceStack.MovieRest/movies");
httpReq.Accept = "text/csv";
var csv = new StreamReader(httpReq.GetResponse().GetResponseStream()).ReadToEnd();

Limitations

As most readers familiar with the CSV format will know there are some inherent limitations with CSV-format namely it is a flat-structured tabular data format that really only supports serialization of a single resultset.

This limitation remains, although if you decorate your Response DTO with a [Csv(CsvBehavior.FirstEnumerable)] or standard .NET [DataContract]/[DataMember] attributes the CSV Serializer will change to use the following conventions:

• If you only return one result in your DTO it will serialize that.
• If you return multiple results it will pick the first IEnumerable<> property or if it doesn't exist picks the first property.
• Non-enumerable results are treated like a single row.

Basically if you only return 1 result it should work as expected otherwise it will chose the best candidate based on the rules above.

The second major limitation is that it doesn't yet include a CSV Deserializer (currently on the TODO list), so while you can view the results in CSV format you can't post data to your web service in CSV and have it automatically deserialize for you. You can however still upload a CSV file and parse it manually yourself.

#Features Unlike most CSV serializers that can only serialize rows of primitive values, the CsvSeriliaizer uses the JSV Format under the hood so even complex types will be serialized in fields in a easy to read format - no matter how deep its heirachy.

Feel free to discuss or find more about any of these features at the Service Stack Google Group

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